Ben Welling
Biographic Data
| ID | 2454166 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Welling |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Welling |
| SIGNATURE | BEN WELLING |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4621-2431 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Australia’s Magna Carta: The Anglosphere, ontological security and the fear of abandonment
Geopolitical dilemmas of the Anglosphere: Identity and strategy in the (Il)liberal West
The Anglosphere, France and the coming war in the British Party in the media
This article illustrates and analyses right-wing opinion-formers’ threat perceptions concerning national cohesion within and across the Anglosphere in the immediate post-Brexit period among the British ‘party in the media’. This influential part of the right-wing milieu in Britain is an integral extension of the Conservative party and, increasingly, radical right politics. By analysing opinion on the Anglosphere in ‘the party in the media’ with a…
Global Britain and the dark side of civility: Monarchy and the legacy of colonialism
This article analyses instances of civility and incivility towards the British monarchy at the time of the death of Elizabeth II and the ascension and coronation of Charles III (2022–2023). First, we introduce and unpack the concept of civility, highlighting its three key dimensions: politeness; moral civility; and justificatory civility. Second, we zoom in on specific sets of (in)civility controversies in three areas of the Commonwealth – the Un…
Runnymede's memorials and landscapes: Magna Carta and England's wider communities of belonging
This article explores the memorials at Runnymede, Surrey, to analyse the multiple expressions of Englishness, and the diverse ways in which England's political imaginary extends far beyond the borders of England itself. Whereas much comment on Englishness since the Brexit referendum of 2016 has characterised it as an inward-looking, parochial and even inherently racist, our analysis shows how it has been constructed as highly connected with other…
The Anglosphere and ‘Anglo-scepticism’ in the post-Brexit UK-Australia relationship
The UK-Australia relationship was invested with renewed importance after Brexit, particularly amongst conservatives in both countries. Ideas about cultural and strategic commonality amongst Anglophone countries were an important element of the elite project underpinning Brexit. A comparative analysis of this Anglosphere perspective is important as it shapes the worldviews of political and policy elites in both countries, thus underpinning recent …
Narrative fusion and layering: Statecraft and the shaping of Boris Johnson’s pandemic narrative, 2020–2021
By examining the UK Prime Minister’s justifications for his government’s pandemic responses given during press conferences and during Prime Minister’s Questions from March 2020 to July 2021, this article illustrates the narrative ‘fusion’ (using the pandemic narrative to advance other elements of policy) and ‘layering’ (using the pandemic narrative to justify past policy decision) evident in the construction of Boris Johnson's pandemic narrative.…
The origins of the Anglosphere idea and the contestation of Australian nationhood, 1991–2007
This article shows how Australian politics played an under-researched part in the development of the Anglosphere idea. By examining the contestation of nationhood in Australia from the republic referendum of the 1990s until the mid-2000s, this article offers a new interpretation of the genesis of the Anglosphere idea. The article suggests that debates about national identity in Australia and the Anglosphere idea are co-constitutive. These co-cons…
Nationalism and European disintegration
The politics of the European Union's crises of the 2010s required the emergence of analyses and theorisation that sought to explain the possibility of European dis integration. This article makes a conceptual contribution to the emerging literature on European disintegration by arguing for the inclusion of nationalism as an important—yet under‐represented—variable in the politics and process of disintegration in the European Union. It draws toget…
Tom Nairn: A student perspective
I first encountered Tom Nairn when I saw a copy of The Break-up of Britain (Nairn, 1977) at a friend's house after my undergraduate degree had concluded in 1994. Unintentionally, nationalism was a constant theme of my undergraduate studies. These studies were conducted in England and France in the historic context of European integration and within the framework of the early years of the Erasmus scheme for mass student mobility. As someone studyi…
Brexit, nationalism and disintegration in the European Union and the United Kingdom
Brexit calls us to account for nationalist politics as an independent variable in the historic construction and disintegration of the European Union. By examining the nationalist politics animating the campaigns to leave the European Union throughout the United Kingdom and the politics of keeping the UK united as the ‘games’ of the Brexit negotiations played out, this article argues for the centrality of nationalism in any further understandings …
Shadows of Empire. The Anglosphere in British Politics
‘Making Your Mind Up’: Britain, Europe and Eurovision-Scepticism
Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1956
This book uses the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), as an analytical entry point to understand and illuminate post-War Europe and the drive to create an identity that can legitimise the European project in its broadest sense. The ESC presents an idealised vision of Europe, and this has long existed in a strained relationship with reality. While the trajectory of post-war European integration is a high-profile topic, we believe that the ESC offers a…
The battle of Bruges: Margaret Thatcher, the foreign office and the unravelling of British European policy
Drawing on newly released archival material, this article reassesses Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, widely depicted to have instigated Britain's drift towards Brexit. It opens by giving an essential recap of the main contents of the speech. Next, the article explains why and how we use the address as a prism through which to see Thatcher's European policy-making in action. The third section tells how the speech was written to show how in…
Nairn's England and the progressive dilemma: Reappraising Tom Nairn on English nationalism
In British political and intellectual circles, there is a longstanding disagreement between those envisaging an opportunity for the development of a radical English patriotism and those resistant to the idea of a progressive English imaginary. Despite their antithetical quality, both divergent frameworks were explored in the work of Scottish nationalist and New Left intellectual Tom Nairn, long before mainstream social science preoccupied itself …
Narrative Alignment and Misalignment: Nato as a Global Actor as Seen from Australia and New Zealand
In the wake of the Afghan missions, this article assesses the appetite in Australia and New Zealand for an ongoing relationship with NATO. Australia and New Zealand share many commonalities in their cultural, political, and economic profiles. Yet their identities in the realm of defense and security differ subtly, which has important implications for the reception of NATO’s strategic narratives in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on strategi…
The Politics of English Nationhood: A response
Our Island Story: England, Europe and the Anglosphere Alternative
This article sets out to place political support for Henrietta Marshall’s Our Island Story in the context of debates about Englishness, the European Union and the Anglosphere. It argues that support for this book was not just a debate about the teaching of history, but was part of a wider contest over the memory of Empire and England’s constitutional past. This traditional narrative was deployed to help imagine and suggest a global future for Bri…
Populism and Sovereignty: The EU Act and the In-Out Referendum, 2010–2015
This article argues that the ‘referendum lock’ enshrined in the European Union Act (2011) and the pledge to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union have eroded the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that they sought to defend. Analysis of the Act and debates about an In-Out referendum during the Coalition government's period of office from 2010 to 2015 reveals an unintended consequence: recent debates and policies conc…
English nationalism and Euroscepticism: A response
Euro-myth: Nationalism, war and the legitimacy of the European Union
This article engages with Montserrat Guibernau's argument about the ‘non-emotional’ nature of European identity. In critiquing this argument, this article also advances a broader argument of its own: that we are witnessing an emergent European nationalism. The article suggests that although there are few people who passionately defend European integration today, those that do are increasingly resorting to arguments that depend simultaneously on i…
Integrating Indifference: A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of European Integration
Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism
British participation in the historical process of European integration has been persistently framed as a policy dilemma of the highest order. This dilemma was itself coloured by the existence of policy traditions that oriented Britain away from Europe and towards political communities tied to a historical interpretation of British nationality. Euroscepticism is symptomatic of these traditions and dilemmas while at the same time sustaining them. …
European Integration and the End of an Imperial Consciousness in Britain
This article examines the impact of European integration between 1961 and 1975 on national and imperial consciousness in Britain. It suggests that the end of imperial sentiment that was brought about by greater involvement in Europe did not produce a strong or deep attachment to the idea of European integration. Arguments about the need for European integration to transcend war in Europe tended to reinforce a sense of Commonwealth commonality for…
Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism
British participation in the historical process of European integration has been persistently framed as a policy dilemma of the highest order. This dilemma was itself coloured by the existence of policy traditions that oriented Britain away from Europe and towards political communities tied to a historical interpretation of British nationality. Euroscepticism is symptomatic of these traditions and dilemmas while at the same time sustaining them. …
Losing the peace: Euroscepticism and the foundations of contemporary English nationalism
Political resistance to European integration in the UK laid important ideological foundations for contemporary English nationalism. The politics surrounding accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) was such that it signalled that accession was a matter of supreme national importance and, via the device of a referendum, it led to the fusing of parliamentary and popular sovereignty. The unfolding of the Thatcherite project in Britain adde…
Integrating Indifference: A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of European Integration
Empire-nation: National and imperial discourses in England
When the states of England and Scotland combined in 1707, conditions were created whereby English nationalism could merge into British nationalism. With the expansion of empire, English nationalism was expressed through imperial-national discourses allowing English nationalists to claim non-English space when articulating what might be best understood as an Anglo-British nationalism. Accordingly, such discourses largely 'hid' what one might now u…
Our Island Story: England, Europe and the Anglosphere Alternative
This article sets out to place political support for Henrietta Marshall’s Our Island Story in the context of debates about Englishness, the European Union and the Anglosphere. It argues that support for this book was not just a debate about the teaching of history, but was part of a wider contest over the memory of Empire and England’s constitutional past. This traditional narrative was deployed to help imagine and suggest a global future for Bri…
Populism and Sovereignty: The EU Act and the In-Out Referendum, 2010–2015
This article argues that the ‘referendum lock’ enshrined in the European Union Act (2011) and the pledge to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union have eroded the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that they sought to defend. Analysis of the Act and debates about an In-Out referendum during the Coalition government's period of office from 2010 to 2015 reveals an unintended consequence: recent debates and policies conc…
Theorizing Nationalism
Euro-myth: Nationalism, war and the legitimacy of the European Union
This article engages with Montserrat Guibernau's argument about the ‘non-emotional’ nature of European identity. In critiquing this argument, this article also advances a broader argument of its own: that we are witnessing an emergent European nationalism. The article suggests that although there are few people who passionately defend European integration today, those that do are increasingly resorting to arguments that depend simultaneously on i…
Rump Britain: Englishness and Britishness, 1992–2001
Conservative adherence to the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament resulted in the merging of English with British consciousness. During the 1990s, England's political nationalism expressed itself as a defence of Britishness. This defence of Britishness prevented a political English nationalism cohering at a time when political nationalisms had matured in Scotland and Wales. This merging of England and Britain was particularly evident in conser…
The battle of Bruges: Margaret Thatcher, the foreign office and the unravelling of British European policy
Drawing on newly released archival material, this article reassesses Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, widely depicted to have instigated Britain's drift towards Brexit. It opens by giving an essential recap of the main contents of the speech. Next, the article explains why and how we use the address as a prism through which to see Thatcher's European policy-making in action. The third section tells how the speech was written to show how in…
Nairn's England and the progressive dilemma: Reappraising Tom Nairn on English nationalism
In British political and intellectual circles, there is a longstanding disagreement between those envisaging an opportunity for the development of a radical English patriotism and those resistant to the idea of a progressive English imaginary. Despite their antithetical quality, both divergent frameworks were explored in the work of Scottish nationalist and New Left intellectual Tom Nairn, long before mainstream social science preoccupied itself …
Narrative Alignment and Misalignment: Nato as a Global Actor as Seen from Australia and New Zealand
In the wake of the Afghan missions, this article assesses the appetite in Australia and New Zealand for an ongoing relationship with NATO. Australia and New Zealand share many commonalities in their cultural, political, and economic profiles. Yet their identities in the realm of defense and security differ subtly, which has important implications for the reception of NATO’s strategic narratives in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on strategi…
The Anglosphere and ‘Anglo-scepticism’ in the post-Brexit UK-Australia relationship
The UK-Australia relationship was invested with renewed importance after Brexit, particularly amongst conservatives in both countries. Ideas about cultural and strategic commonality amongst Anglophone countries were an important element of the elite project underpinning Brexit. A comparative analysis of this Anglosphere perspective is important as it shapes the worldviews of political and policy elites in both countries, thus underpinning recent …
Brexit, nationalism and disintegration in the European Union and the United Kingdom
Brexit calls us to account for nationalist politics as an independent variable in the historic construction and disintegration of the European Union. By examining the nationalist politics animating the campaigns to leave the European Union throughout the United Kingdom and the politics of keeping the UK united as the ‘games’ of the Brexit negotiations played out, this article argues for the centrality of nationalism in any further understandings …
Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997–2010
Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997–2010." Australian Journal of Political Science, 48(2), pp. 250–251
The Anglosphere, France and the coming war in the British Party in the media
This article illustrates and analyses right-wing opinion-formers’ threat perceptions concerning national cohesion within and across the Anglosphere in the immediate post-Brexit period among the British ‘party in the media’. This influential part of the right-wing milieu in Britain is an integral extension of the Conservative party and, increasingly, radical right politics. By analysing opinion on the Anglosphere in ‘the party in the media’ with a…
The origins of the Anglosphere idea and the contestation of Australian nationhood, 1991–2007
This article shows how Australian politics played an under-researched part in the development of the Anglosphere idea. By examining the contestation of nationhood in Australia from the republic referendum of the 1990s until the mid-2000s, this article offers a new interpretation of the genesis of the Anglosphere idea. The article suggests that debates about national identity in Australia and the Anglosphere idea are co-constitutive. These co-cons…
Nationalism and European disintegration
The politics of the European Union's crises of the 2010s required the emergence of analyses and theorisation that sought to explain the possibility of European dis integration. This article makes a conceptual contribution to the emerging literature on European disintegration by arguing for the inclusion of nationalism as an important—yet under‐represented—variable in the politics and process of disintegration in the European Union. It draws toget…
The Politics of English Nationhood: A response
Britishness and the Failure of Australian Republicanism
In 1999, Australians voted to reject the removal of the Queen as Head of State in Australia. It would be wrong though to see this vote as an endorsement of monarchy. However, the vote did throw issues of the role of Britishness in Australia into the political arena. In fact it was the residual Britishness of the republican movement and its commitment to the sovereignty of Parliament, rather than the Britishness of the monarchists, which was cruci…
Empire-nation: National and imperial discourses in England
When the states of England and Scotland combined in 1707, conditions were created whereby English nationalism could merge into British nationalism. With the expansion of empire, English nationalism was expressed through imperial-national discourses allowing English nationalists to claim non-English space when articulating what might be best understood as an Anglo-British nationalism. Accordingly, such discourses largely 'hid' what one might now u…
Britishness and the Failure of Australian Republicanism
In 1999, Australians voted to reject the removal of the Queen as Head of State in Australia. It would be wrong though to see this vote as an endorsement of monarchy. However, the vote did throw issues of the role of Britishness in Australia into the political arena. In fact it was the residual Britishness of the republican movement and its commitment to the sovereignty of Parliament, rather than the Britishness of the monarchists, which was cruci…
Theorizing Nationalism
Rump Britain: Englishness and Britishness, 1992–2001
Conservative adherence to the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament resulted in the merging of English with British consciousness. During the 1990s, England's political nationalism expressed itself as a defence of Britishness. This defence of Britishness prevented a political English nationalism cohering at a time when political nationalisms had matured in Scotland and Wales. This merging of England and Britain was particularly evident in conser…
Between Vladivostok and Africa: Teaching European Studies in Australia
Learning about Europe in Australia at the higher education level requires lecturers and tutors to ground their teaching in students’ pre-existing understanding of Australia’s links with Europe. This link needs to be made to students in the classroom and to university management as a case for embedding European Studies within university administrative structures. I will also argue that whilst students display a keen interest in contemporary Europe…
Losing the peace: Euroscepticism and the foundations of contemporary English nationalism
Political resistance to European integration in the UK laid important ideological foundations for contemporary English nationalism. The politics surrounding accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) was such that it signalled that accession was a matter of supreme national importance and, via the device of a referendum, it led to the fusing of parliamentary and popular sovereignty. The unfolding of the Thatcherite project in Britain adde…
Exhibition Reviews
Exhibition Reviews
Enoch Powell: The lonesome leader
By all accounts Enoch Powell was not someone you would warm to, but his personal awkwardness was offset by his enduring popular appeal - a charisma that enabled support for his political causes to cross class boundaries and party affiliations. Despite his education and erudition - or perhaps because of it - he appealed to the working classes and Labour voters, and appeared as a man speaking truth unto power, unafraid to break the political taboos…
Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997–2010
Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997–2010." Australian Journal of Political Science, 48(2), pp. 250–251
European Integration and the End of an Imperial Consciousness in Britain
This article examines the impact of European integration between 1961 and 1975 on national and imperial consciousness in Britain. It suggests that the end of imperial sentiment that was brought about by greater involvement in Europe did not produce a strong or deep attachment to the idea of European integration. Arguments about the need for European integration to transcend war in Europe tended to reinforce a sense of Commonwealth commonality for…
Nation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand
English nationalism and Euroscepticism: A response
Euro-myth: Nationalism, war and the legitimacy of the European Union
This article engages with Montserrat Guibernau's argument about the ‘non-emotional’ nature of European identity. In critiquing this argument, this article also advances a broader argument of its own: that we are witnessing an emergent European nationalism. The article suggests that although there are few people who passionately defend European integration today, those that do are increasingly resorting to arguments that depend simultaneously on i…
Integrating Indifference: A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of European Integration
Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism
British participation in the historical process of European integration has been persistently framed as a policy dilemma of the highest order. This dilemma was itself coloured by the existence of policy traditions that oriented Britain away from Europe and towards political communities tied to a historical interpretation of British nationality. Euroscepticism is symptomatic of these traditions and dilemmas while at the same time sustaining them. …
The Politics of English Nationhood: A response
Our Island Story: England, Europe and the Anglosphere Alternative
This article sets out to place political support for Henrietta Marshall’s Our Island Story in the context of debates about Englishness, the European Union and the Anglosphere. It argues that support for this book was not just a debate about the teaching of history, but was part of a wider contest over the memory of Empire and England’s constitutional past. This traditional narrative was deployed to help imagine and suggest a global future for Bri…
Populism and Sovereignty: The EU Act and the In-Out Referendum, 2010–2015
This article argues that the ‘referendum lock’ enshrined in the European Union Act (2011) and the pledge to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union have eroded the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that they sought to defend. Analysis of the Act and debates about an In-Out referendum during the Coalition government's period of office from 2010 to 2015 reveals an unintended consequence: recent debates and policies conc…
Narrative Alignment and Misalignment: Nato as a Global Actor as Seen from Australia and New Zealand
In the wake of the Afghan missions, this article assesses the appetite in Australia and New Zealand for an ongoing relationship with NATO. Australia and New Zealand share many commonalities in their cultural, political, and economic profiles. Yet their identities in the realm of defense and security differ subtly, which has important implications for the reception of NATO’s strategic narratives in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on strategi…
Nairn's England and the progressive dilemma: Reappraising Tom Nairn on English nationalism
In British political and intellectual circles, there is a longstanding disagreement between those envisaging an opportunity for the development of a radical English patriotism and those resistant to the idea of a progressive English imaginary. Despite their antithetical quality, both divergent frameworks were explored in the work of Scottish nationalist and New Left intellectual Tom Nairn, long before mainstream social science preoccupied itself …
Shadows of Empire. The Anglosphere in British Politics
‘Making Your Mind Up’: Britain, Europe and Eurovision-Scepticism
Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1956
This book uses the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), as an analytical entry point to understand and illuminate post-War Europe and the drive to create an identity that can legitimise the European project in its broadest sense. The ESC presents an idealised vision of Europe, and this has long existed in a strained relationship with reality. While the trajectory of post-war European integration is a high-profile topic, we believe that the ESC offers a…
The battle of Bruges: Margaret Thatcher, the foreign office and the unravelling of British European policy
Drawing on newly released archival material, this article reassesses Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, widely depicted to have instigated Britain's drift towards Brexit. It opens by giving an essential recap of the main contents of the speech. Next, the article explains why and how we use the address as a prism through which to see Thatcher's European policy-making in action. The third section tells how the speech was written to show how in…
Political science (28 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Politics (27 works) · Law (26 works) · Law (21 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Economics (13 works) · European union (12 works) · Nationalism (12 works) · Political Systems and Governance (12 works)